LMW states the obvious: "Nobody gets elected without voters and the American voters returned Bush to office in 2004."

That this guy could be on the ballot in 2000, and win it, let alone take it again in 2004 speaks volumes about the "stupidity" of your average American . . .

http://preview.tinyurl.com/589x6o or

http://www.slate.com/id/2109242/

(in keeping with today's "plucky British" theme

LMW continues, giving us the benefit of his doubt: "Even I am less inclined today to think there was widespread fraud in the 2004 election. It was Ohio and there were all kinds of electoral shenanigans employed by the Republicans to tip that state to Bush in 2004."

Fraud, shmaude . . . Dubya should have been shown the highway by a vast majority of right-thinking (not right-wingers, necessarily) voters. Even with some fraud factored in . . .

yet he was ushered in for another term to dismantle America.

And suddenly, people are supposing that it's a shoo-in for Obama over McCain, but I'd hold the phone on that one. After hearing both guys (with Hillary thrown in) talking at Aipac (to the Elders of Zion, quips Jon Stewart), I'm not that unsure that electing either will make much difference. Like, suddenly, overnight, America isn't going to continue to act like an 800 pound gorilla? The military & it's hangers-on are going to stop sucking at the taxpayers teats? All the gunboats are going to be mothballed? Americans aren't going to whimpering security freaks anymore. Dream on. Yes, it's all up to the voters and they're going to get exactly who they want . . . and deserve.

LMW proves that he is indeed the headmaster on this particular board as he chastises me with his scholarly wit, then gives me a rap on the knuckles for being uppity in class: "If only all the American people could be more like you and think just like you and see all the same Deep Truths you see, everything would just be super peachy. Have you thought about re-education camps?"

No, but I'm sure you love to be an 'instructor' in such an institution. Talk about a 'captive audience'. Dang, people would have to listen to you (or face the consequences, wot) instead of scrolling on by . . .

Ordinarily, I leave the googling to Der Googlemeister. And I like to leave the Cutting / Pasting to those who want to educate us through the words of others (often reams & reams of the stuff with bold indices to indicate the points you must remember in case of a snap exam). But today, the words of Toad Gingrich leave an especially bad taste in my mouth . . .

So, from the pens and mouths of others, who perhap have a little something more in their souls than Mr. Gingrich and his cringing cowardly compatriots.

"Fear is not the natural state of civilized people." -- Aung San Suu Kyi

"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd." --Bertrand Russell

"Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light." -- Dorothy Thompson

"Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness." -- James Thurber

And some observations on the upcoming election, and the choices we're faced with:

"The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it." -- Edward Dowling

"There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust." -- Demosthenes

"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Aye, I stand before you guilty . . . . " -- Totallyblase

William Timberman ponders the past: "When I'm forced to listen to people like Rush Limbaugh, or Newt Gingrich, her stories come back to me. This is how a culture of resentment begins, but it isn't how it ends. Rush and Newt are too stupid to foresee that end, and to understand that they're as much at risk from it as those they despise, but we who aren't blessed with their gift of oblivion can have no such excuse."

Those who are willingly ignorant and refuse to learn history, are, as the old cliche goes, doomed to repeat it -- Groundhog Day.

Two names the aforementioned honorary brown-shirts (stuffed brown-shirts at that) may want to google:

Ernst Röhm

Kolibri (Operation Hummingbird)

The revolution oft ends up eating its children.

Der Googlemeister is on this one faster than a mallard on a junebug: "heh... He's "no disciple of Gingrich," but look where he mined all those Newt Gingrich quotes from:

http://www.boycottliberalism.com/Gingrich.htm"

Imagine the noive! Claiming to be a dead-ender for a dead-ender, then getting caught out googling something, then copying & Scotch-taping it into the body of your message in an attempt to put your point, no matter how loopy, across.

"Let's give credit where credit is due, and admit that scotch tape was a really good idea." -- George Carlin

See, we can all do it!!